The Toronto Blue Jays are remaking themselves on the fly this offseason.

R.A. Dickey is just the latest fortification; that follows the looting of the Miami Marlins’ roster for Jose Reyes and Co. last month.

“Welcome to the party,” says the rest of the American League East.

That is, the rest of the division that isn’t the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. The Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays finally have planted their feet, stopped running away and told their overlords, “Enough.”

No more watching the East play out as the Big Two and the Little Three. No more AL Beast and AL Least.

Or, as O’s manager Buck Showalter told season-ticket holders last summer: "Fearful of them? Afraid to play them? I look at it as an opportunity.”

Somebody had to, after all this time. Who knew it would be all of them?

First it was perpetually awful Tampa Bay, starting in 2008, when it fought gobs of cash with waves of homegrown talent and took the division from the pair. Then it was the Orioles this past season, out of literally nowhere, taking the Yankees to the final day of the regular season and then the final game of their Division Series.

Now, Toronto, back in the mix, is refusing to back down.

It’s refreshing, and it’s welcome. Not just from the oppressed and depressed fans in Toronto, Tampa and Baltimore, but from all of baseball.

Even if the Little Three were not admitting to cowering in the wake of the behemoths, they sure were looking and acting like it, with all the annual talk about wanting to rise to third place, while decrying the twin Evil Empires and their bottomless resources.

Oh, and their regional networks, their luxury-tax flaunting, their abuses of the system. The injustice of it all. Sure hope their fans can make it down to our ballparks this summer, though. That sure would help our bottom line.

But now, if the Blue Jays’ hyperactive offseason pans out, that could change for the foreseeable future. The baseball solar system does not solely revolve around the Yanks and Sox, while the Blue Jays, Rays and Orioles live in a parallel universe.

The last time both New York and Boston finished lower than second place was … 1992. That was before the divisions were even realigned into their current states. Since those five franchises were grouped together in 1994, a year has not gone by in which the Yankees or Red Sox were not one of the top two. Eleven times since then, they both were the top two. For eight consecutive years, 1998 to 2005, it was Yanks-Sox in that order.

Yet the past five years have been a different story, starting with the Rays’ division title and World Series trip in ’08. The next five years could be even more different.

Tampa’s rise, despite its doggedly small-revenue status, is well-documented, as is the fact that the Rays proved that they were not one-year wonders and that they were ready to spend their money wisely (wave to Evan Longoria over there).

The Orioles can hang their sudden success on Showalter, the smartest and most professional hire they’d made in more than a decade. The explosion into contention this season is the fruit of the seed he planted a year before the aforementioned boast in mid-2011. Upon his arrival the summer before, he declared that he had no intention of backing down to the Yankees or Red Sox—and the following spring, he backed it up with a river of smack-talk unleashed in the infamous Men’s Journal interview.

Firing heat at Derek Jeter and Theo Epstein? The Orioles? It was perceived as half-blasphemy, half-audacity and all-insanity then. Now, not so much.

The audacity of Toronto’s moves this winter is just as stunning.

And what have the Yankees and Sox done so far to fire back, the way they usually do when anyone else in baseball launches an assault on their supremacy?

The Yankees signed Kevin Youkilis, and re-signed most of their bigger free agents (many of whom are their oldest ones, like Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte). They also announced they would be without Alex Rodriguez until possibly midseason because of hip surgery.

The Red Sox? Snagged Shane Victorino, which is good. Of course, they’re coming off last season’s fire sale and their managerial firing, both prompted by their nosedive into last place.

Both teams still are loaded with money. Lately, that money hasn’t bought much. Since the Yankees won it all in ’09, there just hasn’t been terribly much to fear about either team.

Maybe it could have—or should have—been like that all along for the Little Three. Or maybe they just needed time and a way to find that out. For more than a decade, they found out the hard way.

They know now. The Reign of Terror finally might be over. Especially the “terror” part.